The Art of Marriage Survival
by triffickie
Summary: Being Cyrus, KatyDinshaw. Katy both hates and loves the fact she fell in love with Dinshaw.


**the fine art of marriage survival**  
fandom: being cyrus  
pairing: katy/dinshaw  
rating: pg-13  
disclaimer: homi adajania & kersi khambatta created and own the characters.  
notes: The film tells everything you need to know about Cyrus so I focused on these two. Spoilers for the ending of the film.

Katy both hates and loves the fact she fell in love with Dinshaw.

Hates it because she was so incredibly in love with him that she hopelessly absorbed his ideals, his habits, his words. That for a few hazy, unfortunate years, she adopted his habit and liking of ganja as well as his avant-garde life style.

Katy doesn't remember much of it. She regrets it because looking back on the all of those uncertain, foggy memories, it often feels like it was the greatest time of her life. The only time she was really truly living.

--

Many years down the line, she is no longer in love with everything her husband could've become, and yet she stays with Dinshaw. His success is yellowy newspaper clippings now, but she loves the fact her name is printed on some of them. Mentions of the muse, even though no adjectives were ever attached to her name. It would've suited her vanity, but hardly any journalists writing about Dinshaw ever met her, and those who did were never interested.

It's because of the newspaper clippings, those tiny fortunes, that she loves the fact she fell in love with Dinshaw Sethna. It's the little bits of her in his art, in him, that Katy adores. Like a good Indian wife (who cheats on her husband whenever visiting his brother in Mumbai) she feels one with her husband.

--

Dinshaw doesn't remember the last time he woke up and wasn't hungry, or the last time he fell asleep under the stars, or the last time he sculpted something he actually liked.

Sometimes, none of this matters. Sometimes it is all that matters. It's those days he can get very fed up with Katy, but the days when everything, including her, just sails by in the slow, pleasant breeze, those are the good days.

Most days are good days. If he was angry about something yesterday, today he will forget the details of it, slowly but permanently. If he started on a piece a week ago, he'll look at it now and not know where he was going with it, so he'll start again.

"You never do anything," Katy hisses at him when he beats the piece of molded clay back into a lump that doesn't resemble anything at all.

"You never allow me to," he replies and waters his hands, beginning to work on something completely new. Something completely brilliant. Or then not. You never know, that's the beauty of it.

Dinshaw used to have three passions; art, Katy and pleasure. He used to be able to combine them, draw pleasure from Katy or art, or Katy and art, but then he found that pleasures could come so easy. He didn't need art shows and trips to London and Paris, he could live in his house in Panchgani and smoke and that was good enough.

Not good enough for Katy, perhaps, but Dinshaw knew that for all Katy desired glamour, such a life would've destroyed everything about her.

At least, everything he used to love about her. Some days she allows him to touch her and they both revel in the youthful memories of sharing a bed. Katy was hopelessly passionate in the same pleasure-seeking way Dinshaw used to be but it never did quite work out between them anymore. Sex, passion. Fun.

--

In the court-room and afterwards in prison, whenever they get to meet Katy holds Dinshaw's hand or touches his fingers. There is nothing new about Katy touching him, but there is something oddly innocent about her touch now. It's not desperate, it's delicate, and she doesn't even try to bring his hand onto her hip or slide it up her thigh, she just touches.

Dinshaw wonders if Katy has grown old, if he's grown old, or if they've both just started to accept their days of youth passing them by. If Katy's softened up or just gone mad.

She doesn't speak much anymore, just touches, and whatever he says, she listens to, absorbing every word of it. Taking him in like she never has before.

Perhaps he's gone mad himself.

The days he gets to meet Katy, and everything stays still as she touches him, those are the good days.


End file.
